The recent events in Ceuta, marked by the deaths and suffering of those attempting to cross into Europe, have once again exposed the human consequences of its southern border regime. Drawing on fieldwork and documentary filming carried out in Ceuta and Melilla in 2025, this talk places the present moment within the longer histories and shifting realities of these two Spanish cities in North Africa. Approaching them as borderlands, it considers the border not simply as a territorial line or physical fence, but as a changing configuration of material infrastructures, legal regimes, social relations and claims to sovereignty. Through the experiences, memories and narratives of those who live alongside the border, the talk explores how borders are lived, negotiated and continually remade through mobility, separation and everyday relations. It also considers the border as a space in which competing understandings of hospitality come into conflict: between Spain’s and Europe’s legal obligations towards those seeking protection, increasingly securitized responses to migration, and the hostility/hospitality that has emerged among sectors of the local population. Against the backdrop of the recent events, it asks what “Fortress Europe” reveals about the changing forms of bordering, the assertion of sovereignty, the identities and relationships borders produce and fracture, and the human cost of maintaining them.

Nota biográfica

Parisa Delshad é Professora Adjunta no Departamento de Filologia Inglesa da Universidade de Salamanca. A sua pesquisa atual foca as fronteiras e as narrativas de guerra nos media, intervenção e a rutura política entre o Irão e a sua diáspora, de forma a examinar a circulação dessas narrativas entre os migrantes iranianos na diáspora iraniana mais ampla e em alguns territórios específicos. Interessa-lhe analisar como é que a comunidade diaspórica enquadra a esperança, o conflito e a intervenção militar enquanto caminhos possíveis ou necessários para uma mudança política no Irão. Atualmente, a sua atenção centra-se em representações dos eventos mais recentes e da guerra contra o Irão nos espaços da diáspora. Para além de diversas publicações, Parisa Delshad integra o projeto europeu de investigação "European Hospitality in Film".